Sandbox:Command and Communications

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Assigned to: William Murdoch

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During missions and expeditions, group cohesion and management is an essential part of ensuring mission success. Organizational structures and tools used to keep cohesion and accomplish mission goals are called Command and Communications, Command and Control, or simply C2 systems. One such system exists for use by ship command to organize, direct, and track crew members on away missions to avoid chaos.

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Group Position

One of the most important aspects of the C2 system is the relative position of each team member. This is typically tied to team cohesion, which itself is vital for proper operations. Periodically, every 2 second, the C2 system will check each member's location within a team. It compares this location to that of the other members, and determines clusters of members and isolated members. Take the following example, where letters A through G represent members of a team.

 [A]---[B]---[C]- - - - [D]                     [E]--[F]                      [G]
^----------GROUP1----------^                   ^-GROUP2-^                  ^-GROUP3-^
      (Primary Group)                      (Detached Subgroup)              (Isolate)

Members that are close together will form groups. As seen, A, B, C, and D are close enough together to form GROUP1. E and F are close enough to each other to form GROUP2, but far enough from GROUP1 to be considered a separate cluster. Finally, member G is far enough from both GROUP1 and GROUP2, but is alone and therefore an isolate. If, during the next C2 update, GROUP2 had traveled close enough to GROUP1, the groups would merge into a single group.

The primary group is always wherever the Team Leader is located, in this example that is member A. Every other group are called 'detached subgroups'. Members that are alone are called 'isolates'.

Distance is shown in the above examples as the dash marks (-). Those close together show compact dash marks, while those starting to lag behind are seen with spaced out dash marks. This represents relative distance to the group, which is displayed on the program as "Close" or "Extended". Should, in this example, member D continue to the right, they will go from "Extended" to detached from GROUP1 and become an isolate. This allows for oversight of team cohesion.

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